Have nothing to do with the [evil] things that people do, things that belong to the darkness. Instead, bring them out to the light... [For] when all things are brought out into the light, then their true nature is clearly revealed...

Tag Archives: consequences

This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Tuesday, October 31, 2017:

One measure of how the U.S. economy continues to exceed expectations is the Economic Surprise Index published by Citigroup. It’s a tool that is used to measure how the economy compares to those expectations and, at the moment at least, it reflects the ebullience reported elsewhere. Any reading above zero indicates that the economy’s performance is exceeding projections. On Tuesday it hit 40 — its highest level since April.

That performance has repeatedly been reported in The New American and elsewhere, with these notable results:

For those still doubtful about the communist background and purposes of the Black Lives Matter “movement,” James Simpson, Trevor Louden, and Matthew Vadum have performed a great public service. Writing for Accuracy in Media (AIM), the trio linked [see Sources below] BLM all the way back to Vladimir Lenin:

This article was published by The McAlvany Intelligence Advisor on Monday, August 28, 2017:

Former Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio

There’s little doubt that sheriffs in counties on or near the country’s southern border have been watching, and waiting, for a signal from the Trump administration about its views on enforcing immigration laws. Those would especially include those who consider themselves “constitutional” sheriffs.

That signal arrived late Friday with President Trump’s pardon of Maricopa County Arizona’s Sheriff Joe Arpaio. Before Friday, all those sheriffs had to go on was hope – hope that they wouldn’t be targeted for enforcing the law the way Arpaio was. Now they can rest easier knowing they have a friend in the White House and not an enemy. And the net effect will be stronger enforcement of the country’s immigration laws.

For Arpaio it was a long-awaited victory over the Obama administration. For the citizens of the United States it is also a victory over illegals committing crimes without consequences.

This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Wednesday, August 23, 2017:

Antonin Scalia, former Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States

The Second Amendment Foundation (SAF) and the Cato Institute, along with the National Sheriffs’ Association and the Independence Institute, filed a “friend of the court” brief on Monday urging the Supreme Court to take under review a lower court’s decision upholding Maryland’s nearly total ban on so-called assault weapons.

Prior to passage of the Firearms Safety Act (FSA) in 2013, Maryland’s gun controls were bad enough: The law permitted those citizens “in good standing” to possess semi-automatic rifles, but only after passing an extensive (and costly) background check along with meeting various other requirements. Starting October 1, 2013, those controls became positively onerous: Any firearm designated as an “assault weapon” was banned from private possession altogether. The law included “assault long rifles,” “assault pistols,” and “copycat weapons.” That automatically included the semi-automatic (one squeeze of the trigger fires a single round) rifles that are most popular among Americans, including Marylanders, including the AR-15 and AK-47 models and knockoffs.

The new law allowed exceptions for “active law enforcement officers.”

Stephen Kolbe, a life-long resident of Maryland living in Towson, owned a “full-size semi-automatic handgun” but wanted, for self-protection purposes, to purchase one of those now-banned semi-automatic rifles. Under the new law he couldn’t, and so he, with the help of the SAF, filed suit claiming Maryland’s new law violated his Second Amendment-protected rights. He also claimed that by giving LEOs an exception, the law also violated his rights under the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment.

This article was published by The McAlvany Intelligence Advisor on Wednesday, August 16, 2018:

State flag of Venezuela.

Inquiring minds are asking: what on earth is the US doing meddling in the affairs of Venezuela? The media has broadcast the rolling and accelerating disaster taking place there, with some even properly blaming it on socialist practices unleased by Marxist Hugo Chavez (they are called “Chavism” and its supporters are called “Chavists”) and his protégé, Nicolas Maduro.

Those policies, enforced with increasing vengeance upon a powerless citizenry, have all but destroyed a country that once was one of the most prosperous in South America.

Grant the point. But does this justify in any way U.S. interference? Does it justify sanctions, freezing of assets of Maduro and his henchmen, and removing the freedom of Americans to do business with him, or them? Notice please that the sanctions only apply to about 30 of Maduro’s people and not to any of the 20 or so American oil refineries currently supporting Maduro’s Marxist regime to the tune of a billion dollars a month.

This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Monday, August 14, 2017:

Following the issuance of the “Lima Declaration” on Friday stating that “Venezuela is no longer a democracy,” signed by nearly a dozen South American countries as well as Canada, President Trump had the opportunity to back off on previous threats of possibly using military force to oust its Marxist dictator Nicolás Maduro. Instead he ramped them up, declaring: “We have many options.… This is our neighbor. We are all over the world and we have troops all over the world in places that are very, very far away. Venezuela is not very far away and the people … are suffering. They’re dying. We have many options for Venezuela including a possible military option, if necessary…. I’m not going to rule out a military option. Venezuela is a mess.”

But as Henri Falcon, the opposition governor of the Venezuelan state of Lara, responded, “This mess is ours! Sort out your own, of which you have plenty.”

Mish Shedlock, a Trump supporter, asked the president a number of questions about why he is threatening Venezuela:

This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Thursday, August 10, 2017:

Nicolas Maduro

The U.S. Treasury Department slapped sanctions on another eight Venezuelan government officials on Wednesday, bringing the total now to nearly 30. This is a partial fulfillment of a promise by the Trump administration to sanction everyone involved in the establishment of the fraudulent Venezuelan “constituent assembly” sworn in on Tuesday.

Included among the eight is Adan Chavez, the late Marxist President Hugo Chavez’ elder brother, who now serves in the new assembly as secretary of its presidential commission.

Heather Mac Donald hasn’t been given nearly enough credit. The author of The War on Cops: How the New Attack on Law and Order Makes Everyone Less Safe published last summer answers the question: what is the root cause of the increasing gun violence in cities like Chicago, Newark, Detroit, Baltimore, and elsewhere?

It’s the Ferguson Effect: the increasing unwillingness of officers on the scene to intervene for fear of reprisals and bad publicity. Wrote Mac Donald: “Chicago officers have cut back drastically on proactive policing under the onslaught of criticism from the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement and its political and media enablers.” The consequences are predictable: “Criminals are back in control and black lives are being lost at a rate not seen for decades.”

This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Tuesday, August 1, 2017:

As of 11 p.m. Monday night, the last day of July, Chicago gun violence is ahead of last year, which was the deadliest in the last 20 years. Citywide, the homicide total was 409, with 74 killed in July alone.

Chicago Police Department officials expressed frustration despite having put “additional resources” on the streets in the areas where most of the shootings are taking place. Over the long July 4 weekend, CPD put out an additional 1,300 officers, with department spokesman saying, “I don’t think lack of resources was an issue.”

This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Friday, June 30, 2017:

In an early-morning tweet, President Donald Trump decried the violence in Chicago and announced that he was sending in “federal help.” But the rationale for this “help” would not exist if Chicago police were not hamstrung by the war on cops and the “Ferguson Effect.”

President Donald Trump’s early morning Tweet on Friday decried the continuing violence in Chicago and announced that he was sending in “federal help.” Tweeted the president: “Crime and killings in Chicago have reached such epidemic proportions that I am sending in Federal help. 1714 shootings in Chicago this year!”

As of Sunday June 25 there were 308 murders in Chicago as compared to 311 at the same time last year. President Trump disparaged the continuing violence in Chicago during his campaign and then following his inauguration, calling it “horrible carnage” and “out of control” and threatening to “send in the feds” without defining exactly that he meant.

With the creation of the “Chicago Crime Gun Strike Force” (unfortunately linking crime with guns in the public’s perception) observers are learning more about what he meant:

This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Thursday, June 29, 2017:

Susana Mendoza

Despite the clock’s ticking on the downgrade of Illinois’ $25 billion of indebtedness to junk status on midnight Friday, investors remain complacent. True, some mutual funds have offloaded $2 billion of Illinois debt in the last few months, but the Wall Street Journal provided salve to investors’ concerns that those remaining invested will be badly hurt. Unnamed analysts, wrote the Journal, “predict prices would drop only a few cents in the event of a junk downgrade.” They noted that Vanguard Group has $1.2 billion of Illinois bonds spread across seven of its bond mutual funds, with a company spokesman saying that it is “comfortable with the risk/reward” of investing in the state’s bonds.

The U.S. Treasury announced on Thursday that the federal government collected more money in May than in any other month in history: $240.4 billion. In the same breath, it said that the government spent $328.8 billion, creating a deficit of $88.4 billion.

From a wage earner’s perspective, it meant that in May the average worker paid $1,572 in taxes but the government spent $2,149, making up the $577 difference by borrowing. Such deficit spending is making the S&P Global credit rating agency increasingly nervous.

Just a week earlier, the agency affirmed its best rating — A-1+ — for the government’s “short term” debt, which means, in its own parlance, that the federal government’s ability to pay its current bills is “strong.” But in the longer term, the agency is far less sanguine. While holding its current long-term rating at AA+ (one full notch below its best rating), it said it’s unable to give the United States its highest rating (AAA) because of “high general government debt, relatively short-term-oriented policymaking, and uncertainty about policy formulation” for the future. It explained what it meant about that “uncertainty”:

Some of the [Trump] Administration’s policy proposals appear at odds with policies of the traditional Republican leadership and historical base. That, coupled with lack of cohesion, not just across, but within parties, complicates the ability to effectively and proactively advance legislation in Congress, particularly on fiscal policy. Taken together, we don’t expect a meaningful expansion or reduction of the fiscal deficit over the forecast period.

And what does it say about what’s likely to happen over that “forecast period”?

The U.S.’s net general government debt burden (as a share of GDP) remains twice its 2007 level. While, in our view, debt to GDP should hold fairly steady over the next several years, we expect it to rise thereafter absent measures to raise additional revenue and/or cut nondiscretionary expenditures.

What does that phrase “next several years” mean? How much time before the government’s national debt explodes upward? Says S&P:

Although deficits have declined, net general government debt to GDP remains high at about 80% of GDP. Given our growth forecasts and our expectations that credit conditions will remain subdued, thus keeping real interest rates in check, we expect this ratio to hold fairly steady through 2020. At that point, it could deteriorate more sharply, partly as a result of demographic trends.

Translation: Deficit spending will remain “subdued” for three and a half years, and then Katy bar the door!

Here is where S&P bows out of the picture, giving way instead to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), which completed the picture in its March report:

Federal debt held by the public, defined as the amount that the federal government borrows from financial markets, has ballooned over the last decade. In 2007, the year the recession began, debt held by the public represented 35 percent of GDP. Just five years later, federal debt held by the public has doubled to 70 percent and is projected to continue rising.

“Continue rising”? By how much? And by when? The CBO is blunt:

Debt has not seen a surge this large since the increase in federal spending during World War II, when debt exceeded 70 percent of GDP. The budget office projects that growing budget deficits will cause the debt to increase sharply over the next three decades, hitting 150 percent of GDP by 2047.

So, that ratio of government debt compared to the country’s economic ability to produce goods and services was 35 percent in 2007, is now 70 percent, and will soon be 150 percent.

And what’s the reason?

The majority of the rise in spending is largely the result of programs like Social Security and Medicare in addition to rising interest rates. For example, Social Security and major health care program spending represented 54 percent of all federal noninterest spending, an increase from the average of 37 percent it has been over the past 50 years.

It appears to be an unstoppable locomotive. Non-discretionary spending (spending already locked into place by past Congresses and fully expected to be received by its beneficiaries) is on autopilot. And interest rates now coming off historic lows are only going to increase those annual deficits into the future as far as the eye can see.

The CBO is about as close as one can get to a truly non-partisan federal agency — one that has no partisan political agenda and is considered by many as the most reliable forecaster of future economic events. So it’s not only willing to cover, analyze, and present its findings candidly, it’s also willing to tell the truth. It asked, rhetorically, “What might the consequences be if current laws remain unchanged?” It answered:

Large and growing federal debt over the coming decades would hurt the economy and constrain future budget policy. The amount of debt that is projected under the extended baseline would reduce national saving and income in the long term; increase the government’s interest costs, putting more pressure on the rest of the budget; limit lawmakers’ ability to respond to unforeseen events; and increase the likelihood of a fiscal crisis, an occurrence in which investors become unwilling to finance a government’s borrowing unless they are compensated with very high interest rates.

Which brings one to the ultimate rhetorical question: What happens when even those “very high interest rates” aren’t enough to compensate those investors for the risks they are taking by loaning their money to a government that increasingly isn’t able to pay its bills and must continue to borrow increasingly massive amounts to cover its deficits? What happens next?

The Trump tax reform proposal has put the Democrats into a deliciously difficult position. He wants to eliminate state and local deductions for income and property taxes (but leave charitable and mortgage deductions alone) as part of his attempt to keep his proposal revenue-neutral.

The amounts involved are enormous. The Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center estimates that, if passed, it would cost the rich $1.3 trillion over the next 10 years. The Tax Foundation ran the same numbers and came up with an even bigger number: $1.8 trillion.

The law currently allows state and local income and property taxes to be deducted in calculating an individual’s federal tax liability. But, as both tax groups noted, those benefitting the most from the deductions happen to live in liberal, Democrat-leaning and supporting states. This forces Democrats to face a conundrum:

This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Tuesday, June 6, 2017:

Two tax policy groups — the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center and the Tax Foundation — agree on at least one thing in President Trump’s tax proposal: The elimination of favorite tax deductions used by the wealthy would cost them dearly. The Tax Policy Center calculated that it would cost the rich $1.3 trillion over the next 10 years, while the Tax Foundation put the figure at more than $1.8 trillion.

The law currently allows state and local income and property taxes to be deducted in calculating an individual’s federal tax liability. But as both tax groups noted,

This article was published by The McAlvany Intelligence Advisor on Monday, May 29, 2017:

Will Rogers is credited for noting that “Good judgment comes from experience, and a lot of that comes from bad judgment.” Andrew McCabe is about to suffer the consequences of not following Will’s wisdom.

When Joe Lieberman withdrew his nomination for FBI Director last week, he claimed it was because of a potential conflict of interest in that he works for the same law firm as Trump’s lawyer who is defending the president against the faux Russia investigation. In reality,

According to Ben Cohen, North Korea’s “Supreme Leader,” Kim Jong-un, is certifiably insane. Wrote Cohen: “Kim [is] executing hundreds of officials he deems to be disloyal in extraordinarily brutal fashion … shocking even hardened North Korean elites used to regular purges, random executions, and extreme torture.”

But how would his paranoia, his megalomania, inform his view of America? Would he be willing to launch an EMP attack using one or both of his satellites currently hovering over the US mainland, knowing that the missiles that would be returned from EMP-hardened missile sites here would obliterate his country, turning everything north of the 38th Parallel into glass?

This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Wednesday, May 10, 2017:

The Daily Signal, the Heritage Foundation’s daily Web-based newsletter, took a close look Tuesday at President Trump’s recent appointment of Charmaine Yoest as top communicator at the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). The Daily Signal‘s writer, Rachel del Guidice, liked what she found: Yoest is one more example of the paradigm shift taking place in the Trump administration regarding the value of human life from the moment of conception.

Del Guidice interviewed Kristan Hawkins, president of Students for Life of America, who told her that “we are going to see a radical transformation occur within HHS. I fully expect us [as a society] to talk about … the consequences of abortion on women.”

Tony Perkins, head of the Family Research Council, was equally encouraged:

This article was published by The McAlvany Intelligence Advisor on Monday, May 1, 2017:

As Samuel Taylor Coleridge expressed it, “If men could learn from history, what lessons it might teach us! But passion and party blind our eyes, and the light which experience gives us is a lantern on the stern which shines only on the waves behind.”

Those unfamiliar with the lessons history teaches regarding attempts to legislate morality are about to get another one. One of those, surprisingly, is the Republican Senator from Texas who has just introduced a bill to let El Chapo pay for the wall. After all, said Ted Cruz, it’s “only fitting.” Cruz told Tucker Carlson on Fox News’ “Tucker Carlson Tonight” on Wednesday:

These drug cartels are the ones crossing the border with impunity, smuggling drugs, smuggling narcotics, engaged in human trafficking. They’re the ones violating our laws and it’s only fitting that their ill-gotten gains fund securing the border.

Cruz’s bill specifically targets El Chapo’s assets for use in building the wall:

All illegally obtained profits resulting from any criminal drug trafficking enterprise led by Joaquin Archivaldo Guzman Loera (commonly known as “El Chapo”), which are criminally forfeited to the United States Government as a result of the conviction of [El Chapo] … shall be reserved for security measures along the border between the United States and Mexico, including the completion of a wall along such border, for the purpose of stemming the flow of illegal narcotics into the United States and furthering the Nation’s security.

Cruz sounded very much like another member of Congress who hasn’t read, or remembered, his history: Rep. James Sensenbrenner. In March Sensenbrenner offered his bill, cleverly titled the BUILD WALL (Build Up Illegal Line Defenses With Assets Lawfully Lifted) Act, explaining:

If we do nothing, we put the people of this nation at risk, as well as allow illegal immigrants to take away jobs, opportunities, and social funding from U.S. citizens – all at the expense of the American taxpayer. The BUILD WALL Act is a creative solution to a complex problem.

When quizzed about his bill in March, Sensenbrenner reiterated the case that drug lords should rightly pay for the wall:

This is a way to fulfill the president’s desire to have Mexico pay for the wall. Having the money seized from Mexican drug cartels would mean that bad Mexicans would end up paying for the wall – the bad Mexicans [who] have been terrorizing the good Mexicans with crime and kidnappings and murders within Mexico itself.

But why is no one asking the real question: if the wall is built, will it work in keeping drugs and criminals out of the United States? Or will it, just like the Volstead Act, cause misery beyond measure, with consequences still being felt today nearly a hundred years later?

Films over the last few decades have attempted to answer that question, films such as The Untouchables (1987) or, more recently, Lawless (2012) which just touch on the horrors inflicted upon innocents as those illegal liquor merchants plied their wares, operating as simply businessmen doing their best to “meet a demand.”

As Borderland Beat, the relatively unknown but highly-regarded source of information about the border drug wars, recently noted: “With U.S. support Mexican authorities have been able to kill or capture 33 out of the 37 most dangerous cartel leaders. The recent extradition of Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman to the United States is a testament to the value of high-level cooperation between the two countries. As a result of these notable successes, several larger cartels have fractured and have descended into in-fighting.”

But they haven’t gone away. That have reorganized, are adapting to the new reality, and continue their drug trafficking. First, they consider themselves as businessmen providing a product to meet market demand. Thwarting border protections is an industry in its own right, whether it’s developing tunnels (with electric lights, air-conditioning and motion sensors) under the border, or creating false documentation to get their mules through border checkpoints. They still have immense resources and can buy all the talent they need to counter any protective schemes the Trump administration might dream up.

When they wish to move large sums of cash across the border, the cartels have used “cloned” vehicles that resemble official cars. When that fails, they buy up and ship across the border vast numbers of gift cards, thus reducing law enforcement’s ability to track down the movement of money.

When drones become pesky, they develop countermeasures to defend against them. And they are developing “narco drones” of their own to deliver drugs across the border to the U.S.

In addition, they have the resources to bribe successfully hundreds of Department of Homeland Security employees who have taken in nearly $15 million in bribes since 2006. As Borderland Beat notes, all of this means “that a new border wall will not end or significantly reduce the capabilities and power of Mexican drug cartels. From the days of tequila smuggling into the United States during Prohibition, illicit trafficking across the southwest border has remained a constant.”

As Kyle Smith wrote in his review of “Prohibition,” a PBS special a few years ago:

Banning the sale or manufacture of alcohol made ours “a nation of scofflaws,” as Burns and Novick entitle the second episode of their miniseries. After an initial dip in alcohol consumption, booze sales spiked, with one cop estimating there were 32,000 speakeasies in New York City.

No one who backed the 18th Amendment thought much about the additional police needed to enforce it, the ease with which those police would be bought off, the job losses it would cause, or the innocent bystanders who would be shot when the government decided to crack down.

Prohibition lessened respect for the rule of law and created a big business in bootlegging, which in turn led to murder and mayhem on the streets. Organized crime barely existed before the Al Capones of the world found their calling in Prohibition, and in order to lessen turf wars the gangland bosses began to carve out spheres of influence on a nationwide scale.

“Prohibition was the finishing school, the college and the graduate school for the criminal syndicates of America,” says Dan Okrent, author of “Last Call: The Rise and Fall of Prohibition,” in the film.

If the wall is built (regardless of who pays for it), people like Cruz and Sensenbrenner (and others who should know better) are very likely to learn this lesson from history: one cannot legislate morality, and attempts to do so are likely to have painfully negative and long-lasting consequences. Unfortunately, Coleridge’s lantern, for many, shines only on the waves behind.

In announcing Australia’s new federal gun amnesty program, Justice Minister Michael Keenan told the Sunday Mail last week: “This is the first Australia-wide gun amnesty program since 1996, when the Howard government took action following the devastation of the Port Arthur Massacre.” (above: fountain in Port Arthur) The massacre of 35 people and the wounding of another 23 in late April, 1996 at the popular tourist site in southeastern Australia served as the excuse to implement the country’s National Firearms Agreement (NFA). The NFA turned millions of law-abiding gun owners into criminals with its heavy restrictions, and the amnesty program was designed to remove the now-illegal weaponry from their rightful owners with a mixture of carrot and stick.

Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin sent an early-warning signal to House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) on Wednesday that “on Thursday, March 16, 2017, the outstanding debt of the United States will be at the statutory limit.” He added: